


Once Upon a Time

by GoldenClover



Category: The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5270648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenClover/pseuds/GoldenClover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liesel remembers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time

  In an elegant apartment with leather-bound books and gilded chairs, an old woman sits on a sofa and dreams. Once golden hair, now grey, falls past her shoulders; formerly bright eyes are dull and mournful as they stare at the impeccable wooden flooring. She sits, consumed by memories, thinking of what once was. Around her, the room is silent; but to her, it is lively with the sounds and laughter of the past. The room is empty, but in her mind, there are people all around her. An old man with silver eyes, a boy with hair the colour of lemons, and woman with a cardboard face. She is all alone, but she is surrounded by people. Because once upon a time, they were more than mere memories. Her name is Liesel Meminger, and she has lived a long and fruitful life; but to her, the best times disappeared many, many years ago.

**  
**

 Liesel Meminger closes her eyes and remembers. She remembers the icy bite of snow, stinging already frozen cheeks, as it is thrown by somebody long dead. Rudy Steiner. A boy who died before he had had the chance to live; a boy who had been Liesel’s best friend. When she thinks of him, she thinks of battered soccer balls and cries of victory, a gift from those Himmel Street soccer games. She thinks of a freezing river and the taste of stolen apples. She thinks of sunshine hair and sky-blue eyes. But most of all, she thinks of one sentence, uttered from the mouth of a boy long gone. “How about a kiss, saumensch?” Once upon a time, Liesel had believed that the boy who spoke those words would be around to say them forever. But she was wrong.

**  
**

 A single tears slides down a wrinkled old cheek, and the old woman hears the sound of an accordion in the streets below. She is reminded of another member of her long-ago past. A man with eyes like soft silver and a love for the accordion. His name was Hans Hubermann, and he strikes up melancholy images in her mind of bold letters, painted simply on the walls, and home-mixed paint. To her, the name Hans Hubermann is the taste of champagne on a hot summer's day and, most of all, the sweet music of an accordion. To her, Hans Hubermann is the rough feeling of a cigarette in her fingers as it is rolled for a man she will never see again. Once upon a time, that man had read to her in the early hours of the morning, but never again.

**  
**

 The tears are flowing freely now, and she sits hunched, silent and shaking. The salty taste of tears bring back a stout woman with the tongue of a sailor and the heart of a lion. A woman who scolded and made pea soup when times were hard. A woman who cried over a accordion left behind, a woman who protected a man she had never met from an enemy she did not want to anger. A woman named Rosa Hubermann. Rosa, who was so harsh, but so warm. Once upon a time, Rosa Hubermann did the washing for extra money, but she had no need for money any more.

 **  
**  Liesel thinks of all the others in her past. Poor little Tommy Müller, who had been killed in the bombing, like all those others who didn’t deserve to die. Max, who had been forced to live in a basement for fear of the führer. Frau Holtzapfel, who lost both her sons to the war, both in different ways. Pfiffikus, the old whistling man of Molching. Arthur Berg, who taught her to steal apples. Even her little brother, Werner, who she lost before she was old enough to really know him. Once upon a time, they were no more than a daily part of the old woman’s life.


End file.
